The stereotypical software developer doesn’t care much about design. Making it work is the important thing, right? Well, this is not the case for me. One of the first things I always do when creating a new web application is set up Twitter Bootstrap or Zurb Foundation. It just makes me feel good when I look at what I’ve done and it looks decent. Just black words on a white page doesn’t cut it for me.

However, while Twitter Bootstrap and Zurb Foundation are good enough to get me through a lot of the building part of my app, the truth is, adding a real design to my app has made it real, mostly because it makes me proud to show off my work to others.

When I show the Twitter Bootstrap version of my website to people, I always have to say “this is not the final version, but…”. Since I’ve started to implement a real design, my website looks really polished and it’s easy to show it off. Yes, this is the finished, beautiful version and I’m proud of it.

As a psychology major, I know that the design is what people first see when they come to my application, not how great my product works on the backend. So it’s just as important for me that my project gives just as great of a first impression as the last.

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